February 28, 2011

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White House Middle East and Iran adviser Dennis Ross urged Israel on Monday to recognize in the transformative events under way in the Middle East the case for why it would be a risky mistake to wait to make a permanent peace agreement with the Palestinians.

But Ross conceded, the Obama administration’s Mideast peace-making efforts had already been severely frustrated when the Egyptian revolution erupted last month, and that Israel’s early reaction to the regional unrest has been further risk-aversion rather than commitment to the peace effort. And Ross seemed to acknowledge that the U.S. administration has not yet determined how it will proceed if the current stalemate and intransigence persist.

“If Israel can view one lesson from the events in Egypt, it is the danger of getting stuck with an unsustainable status quo,” Ross told the J-Street conference Monday. “Just as the frustrations in Egypt grew over time, we should all recognize that the conflict with the Palestinians will only become more intractable over time.”

“Because there are a number [of] clocks that are ticking, the longer it takes to forge an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, the harder it will be to forge a two-state solution that meets the needs of both sides,” Ross said.

“The process that began in December had real problems,” Ross said, referring to Washington abandoning an effort to get a new Israeli settlement freeze late last year and trying instead to advance the process through parallel sets of talks with the Israelis and Palestinians. “Again, we will make a judgment where the process is, where the two sides are, and what the most appropriate steps should be [that are] likely to have the best impact.”

Ross defended the recent U.S. veto of a U.N. Security Council resolution that criticized Israeli settlement building, and critiqued Palestinian efforts to seek state recognition from countries around the world, saying that any durable peace settlement would have to be the result of negotiations between the two parties.

It was a point later critiqued by a panel of Middle East scholars.

“Is direct negotiations really the best way to approach this?” political economist and journalist Bernard Avishai asked the conference. “I think it’s clear through five administrations -- going back to Reagan when there were 10,000 [Israeli] settlers and now there are a half million settlers across the Green Line -- that just relying on bilateral negotiations and the idea that it will produce a settlement is misguided. The promise that they will produce a settlement is nil. And yet the product of any good faith negotiations is known.”

“There is a great deal to gain to have the Obama administration give a political horizon to the parties," Avishai continued. "And the Obama administration does not have to win a diplomatic victory by getting the parties to immediately accept what the proposals are, but rather by organizing world opinion around those proposals.”

“It would be a great pity if this new Middle East which is being born before our eyes were met by an old Israel,” New York Times foreign affairs columnist Roger Cohen, recently back from Egypt’s Tahrir Square, told the panel. “And my own view is that, contrary to the grim scenarios Prime Minister Netanyahu has evoked – in essence – ‘watch out, this is not Europe 1989, this could well be Iran 1979,’ … I think this is a hopeful development. …This is about Arabs trying to gain their institutions, rights, dignity and freedom.”

“The core issue here is we have to somehow usher Israel from the defensive crouch it is in, from this siege mentality, which cannot see in this [regional democratic] movement a glimmer of possibility,” Cohen continued. “We need leadership. ... Great leaders of history seize the moment."

“I don’t think Obama is doing a bad job at the moment. But he needs to take it further,” Cohen said, suggesting Obama go to Israel in May and give a speech to the Knesset.

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It appears Mr. Ross gets it. With the mideast moving rapidly away from us,U.S., our population aging rapidly, and our deficits unsustainable, we are going to have no choice but to leave the Mideast soon and aren't gonna have much money either.
That being said, Israel has a real chance of being surrounded and isolated. Israel better make peace now or possibly lose everything.

Laura fails to note in her column that the three "experts" on the J Steet panel blame solely Israel for failure of peacemaking.
She also fails to note that they mocked Dennis Ross because he did not tell the meeting what they wanted him to say.
Note this is the definition of what J Street means by, "Mr. Obama, we have your back!"

Israel is surrounded and isolated. The Arab's propoganda machine has worked very well. They tell the same lies over and over until they are believed as truth. Fact is, the Jews (dhimi) had been persecuted by the Arabs in accordance with religious Koran doctrine. It was when modern day Israel became a recognized country that the Jews left oppressed and unbearable lives in Arab lands. They were brutalized, stripped of their posessions, fled the Arab lands to settle in Israel. Make peace with the Arab Palestinians? Who exactly should they negotiate with? Abbas, the non-elected leader without a mandate or Hammas, the vermin terrorists they have proven time and again to be? Should Israel hope for the Syrians and Egyptians to insure security? Jews have learned the hard way how depending on others for security works out. No thank you. When the Pals want peace, they should demonstrate their desire by ending all terrorism, stop all the anti-Israel propoganda, recognize Israel as The Jewish country she is, and finally, ask sincerely. Fact is, no one wants peace more than the Israeli's as they have demonstrated time and again.

Only person who has been making a living on mideast peace process is D.Ross. There is nothing to show for the money he has been paid over time. He might have been working for Israel as well.
I think US should seriously consider opening up trade relations with Iran for the sake of US jobs. Israeli lobby should cut out this anti iranian propaganda and instead of Israel-First and be US-First. Israel can take care of itself as they are very well armed.

The lack of Middle East peace is due to our long-standing biased policy favoring Israel which in fact is the reason we were attacked on 9/11. And Ross, lead negotiator at Camp David, is a major culprit. As documented in Clayton Swisher’s book “The Truth About Camp David,” Palestinian negotiators, such as Nabil Shaath, at Clinton’s July 2000 Camp David peace talks, said Ross is “more Israeli than the Israelis.” Ross has had a long association with the Israel Lobby, such as AIPAC and WINEP. In 1992, speaking to members of San Francisco’s Jewish community, Ross bragged that the Arabs “had not been able to make a formal freezing of settlements a precondition for the holding of talks.” Arafat had specifically asked that Ross not be the US mediator at Camp David due to his strong anti-Arab reputation. At Camp David, the Palestinians felt Ross was damaging to the talks. Ross first showed a US draft proposal secretly to Barak, and then in his own handwriting made the changes Barak wanted before presenting it to the Palestinians. Camp David was just a re-play of the Geneva Summit fiasco. Albright had told Ambassador Ned Walker that Ross and no one else was in charge of the Israeli-Arab negotiations. Syrian President Asad had been tricked into going to Geneva summit with the promise that all Israeli-occupied Syrian land would be returned in exchange for peace, just as Carter had brought about the return of all Israeli-occupied Egyptian land in exchange for peace with Egypt. Ross and Israel had no intentions of any such fairness. Ditto with Camp David. Arafat was reluctant to attend, suspecting the usual trickery, but Clinton promised him he would not be blamed if the talks failed. Clinton and Ross of course never made a fair offer and then used the Israel Lobby media to falsely blame Arafat. The talks had made progress, however, and Arafat wrote Clinton a letter asking for negotiations to continue since they were so close to an agreement. Ross pre-empted the request, said no, and went off on his annual family vacation to Israel.

Is washington saying same thing to Israel as they are saying to Qudafi. I hope the message is the same. You know the atrocities israel has and is commiting against the Palestinians. I am afraid messages might be different. when it comes to Israel, they do no wrong in Obama's and Hillary's thinking.
Quadafi is a very cruel and must be removed. I say the same thing for israel, they must be dealt with the same way for inhumane treatment of palestinianas.

The World and ME are quickly changing and economic power is slowly replacing military power to some degree.
Of the Worlds 6B people, 1.3B are Chinese, 1.2B are India, I.57B are Muslim and 400M in S. America, that means that over 75% of the world population live in Asia, Africa and S. America.
For US economy to grow we need to export but the US position on the Israel/Palestinian conflict does not help, while China, India and Brazil are becoming exporters themselves.
Pakistan is quickly becoming a major wild card in ME, they now have over 100 nukes and have started on their 4th nuclear reactor now, with the 2nd going online a few weeks ago.
Iran seems to have moved it nuclear R&D to N. Korea and possible paying to build more breeder reactors there to by pass need to refine uranium ore and go straight to plutonium, which is how all other countries have made there plutonium for nukes.

Posted By: The World and ME are quickly changing and economic power is slowly replacing military power to some | February 28, 2011 at 07:22 PM

Dshap: A February 2008 UN report concluded that Palestinian terrorism is the inevitable result of Israeli occupation, colonialism and apartheid conditions. This is why, as pointed out by Professor George Bisharat (New York Times 4/4/09), many countries do not regard violence against foreign military occupation as terrorism and thus consider Hamas a resistance group.
It is Israel which is in violation of UN Security Council resolutions and international law with its illegal occupations of Palestine and parts of Syria and Lebanon. For instance, UN Security Council Resolution 242 calls on Israel to end its occupations because the acquisition of territory by war is inadmissible. For this reason 57 countries (about a third of the UN) do not recognize Israel. Furthermore, Jewish settlements in occupied Arab land violate the Fourth Geneva Convention which forbids an occupying power from transferring any parts of its civilian population into territories seized by military force.
The Arab/Muslim world has long had a fair just peace plan on the table calling for peace and normalization of relations with Israel in return for Israel obeying international law and ending the illegal occupations. In contrast, as shown in the TIME magazine cover article “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace” 9/13/10, the Israelis are lounging fat and happy on their stolen Arab land, in effect boasting to the world that crime pays.

To dshap comment:
Dear dshap, I am not influenced by Muslims, Christians, Jewish, Hindu, etc.. We are all God’s children and are all created equal, we are all the same specie and categorically speaking we all have the same feelings and wants. Yes, the Jewish people have been persecuted but so haven’t a lot of people thru-out history. I feel the pain of the Holocaust and I am sorry that it happened, but it did, and it is the past. In modern times Israel is new and was, you could argue, founded on Imperialism (ie. Brute force). However history in the Mideast has been very tolerant and Jews and Christians have survived in all areas of the Mideast, even in this day. I want peace and justice to rule all lands, like God, and Martin Luther taught me that hate splits the brain. That being said the Palestine and Israel should live as ONE NOT TWO. It should be run as Democracy and All Belligerents, both Palestinians and Israelis should Swear Peace and Unity, like we did at the end of the Civil War. This, in my opinion, will be the Only Way Peace will Occur. If not, like the pros say “amateurs look at tactics, the pros look at logistics."

After the destruction of Iraq's refinery at Baiji, the destruction of Egypt's natural gas pipeline to Israel and Jordan, the kidnapping of Iranian opposition leaders, the first appearance of Iranian warships in the Mediterranean, the call for the genocidal assault on Israel by Egyptian clerical leader Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, and long-range missile attacks from Gaza that hit Beersheba in Israel, how can any sane person believe there can be progress towards peace?

Nobody cares of American loonies.
Obama should try to become the next Lybian president. He has the right religion, he is as dumb as the average Arab ruler, he is as incompetent as the average Arab dictator at running an ennemy.

Any peace agreement hopes are premature, IMO. Neither side is interested in giving an inch, so any agreement will be short-lived, and not worth the paper it's written on. Riots in Israel like the rest of the area? Never gonna happen, and this administration knows it!

Dennis Ross is the most useless person in Washington. He has accomplished nothing useful. He also accomplished nothing as the Clinton mediator between Israel and the Palestinians. What he is not acknowledging is that Israel owns Congress, Ross and most of the other Obama foreign policy staff (and maybe Obama himself). So, Israel has no intention or motivation to compromise on anything. So, the idea that negotiations will accomplish anything is foolhardy.
The US does not have the guts to say no to Israel regardless of what Israel does. If Israel massacred the entire population of Gaza, I am sure many in Congress will praise it as a defensive action. So, the two-state solution is dead. The only result of the current Israeli policy is that in 20 or 30 years Jews will be the minority in an apartheid Israel. Only then will a revolution will be possible that may result in a non-sectarian single-state for all who live there.

The diatribes against Israel are unbelievable. Israel is the only democracy in the middle east. Let the Arabs come out and say to their people that Israel is here to stay as a Jewish state and we are amenable to a just peace whereby the Arabs in Gaza and the so called "territories" are willing to live side by side with the Israelis . There is already a Palestinian state. It is called Jordan. Let the Palestinians there welcome their bretheren and democratically form a government there with their capital in Amman.

as a neutral observer who is as physically far away from that conflict as you can be, it is my very considered and researched judgement, as well as that of many of my acquaintances, that this blatant injustice that continues to be committed everyday by the state of Israel, has got to come to an end. For real justice to prevail, many of Israel's leaders should be tried in the world court for crimes against humanity.

Posted By: as a neutral observer who is as physically far away from that conflict as you can be, it is my very | February 28, 2011 at 11:58 PM

But Mr Ross, the issa-keepit-realis don't have enuff land yet! Still loads left to steal away from the helpless dirty arabs! No! That is what this is about right! Occupiers(the n.. azis did) don't usually steal and colonise... did the Allies steal and colonise Germany!!!
Whats Obama gonna say to the knesset? Stop colonising! Stop the apartheid! Return what you've stolen! Yawn.

After 60 years of constant warfare, thousands of Israelis dead and current attempts at political isolation by Western countries, Israel has every reason to be extremely cautious about the changes in Arab governments. J Street and the left view facts on the ground as incidental to their naive hope that everything will work out well in the end. Not quite the racial experience of the Jewish people over the past 2,000 years.

On 9/28/06 there was a great debate at the historic Cooper Union, NYC, where Abraham Lincoln had bravely spoken out against slavery. The debate concerned whether or not there was a powerful US Israel Lobby and whether it acted against the interests of the US, as claimed by Professor John Mearsheimer and others. Debating against Mearsheimer was Israel Lobby member Dennis Ross. The ignominious US veto February 18, 2011 at the UN National Security Council against the condemnation of the expanding Jewish settlements on occupied Arab land clinched the argument that our country should be called the United States of Israel. And it certainly is against our interests as the entire world except for us condemns Israel while we pay the consequences with revenge terrorism like 9/11 and all these bankrupting wars against Islam for Israeli expansionism.

I am really surprised that Ross still has the job of peace making. If he would have been working in the private sector, he would be collecting unemployment. The fact is that he is working for Israel and must resign his current job. why we are paying somebody who has not produced an iota of progress in the peace process. I actually think that he is hurdle in the process. He is not only favoring Israel in the process, but also trying to make Pal/Israel dispute to be Israel/Iran issue. He is completely out of it and must step down